So how did I become a compliance officer in an investment firm that was later revealed to be a covert billion-dollar Ponzi scheme? And what happened after it was exposed by regulators? Let us start at the beginning. As a compliance consultant, I was often called upon to step in with little or no prior notice. One afternoon, a prominent Miami banking attorney who is a personal friend called up with a problem; he was scheduled to present a lecture on hedge fund money laundering the next morning at a conference on Miami Beach, but his firm had just ordered him to fly immediately to Argentina on urgent business. Since I am known for being able to speak at length, without notes, on most major AML topics, he asked me to take the lecture, to be presented early the next morning. If you've been reading this series since its inception in 2006, you know what my answer was; yes, of course. I took the offer as an intellectual challenge to be accepted.The programme organiser was a group from New York, and the conference took place at a boutique hotel on Collins Avenue. Arriving at the venue, I noticed that I knew one of the attendees, the director of compliance at a major investment firm located in Fort Lauderdale. She was there with the company's CFO, who was a certified public accountant .

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